This Won't Hurt More Than a Little.

“She ate something poisonous outside, maybe a mushroom; we don’t know,” I lied. I wanted to tell her the truth, I really wanted to, but when she asked and I opened my mouth, that’s what came out. Somehow, telling her that my dad killed my dog didn’t seem possible in that moment. My parents’ fights had been bad enough, at times quite exceptional in their explosive brutality, blowing apart all structures of comfort, the debris from which we were left to choke on. But to kill. That was when I first realized that my home was the battleground of a torrid civil war. Missy had been its first real casualty.

Mrs. Dalby had tears in her eyes. Her hand flew to her chest.

“I’m so sorry, Jane,” she said. Sometimes I secretly wished she were my older sister, just so I could live with her and see her every day.

“My dog when I was a kid, her name was Casper; she was a white terrier mix. I found her when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Her hair was overgrown and matted, she had welts on her body, and her nails were overgrown and curled into her pads. She had been abused,” she said.

“How old was she?” I asked. We were sitting in lawn chairs on the small square of concrete behind her house that she called her patio. Sophie and Sarah were playing together in the leaves. Sarah was almost five by that time and a lot younger than Sophie, but they got along anyway and loved to play together.

“She wasn’t that old, maybe just a year. She broke my heart, that someone could be so cruel to an innocent puppy,” she said, shaking her head, eyes glistening. I felt a hot tear run down my face, tasted the salt.

“Jane, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how you must be hurting right now,” she said, leaning forward and placing her hand on my knee.

“It’s Sophie,” I said, looking at my sister playing in the leaves. I was trying hard not to cry; each word I spoke cracked with the effort. “She’s the one I’m worried about. She really loved that dog.” I pressed the rough heel of my palm to my eyes.

“It’s OK; you can cry,” she whispered. The rustling of leaves stopped and I turned to see Sophie looking at me, specks of brown and yellow covering her shirt and hair. She looked at me, I smiled and waved, she went back to playing with Sarah. I wiped my face and nose on my sleeves and struggled to compose myself.

“Tell me more about Casper,” I said, pulling away from Mrs. Dalby. She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. She pulled her hair back, revealing her neck. I couldn’t look away.

“You found her when you were in fifth grade?” I asked, pushing my chair back to gain some distance.

“Yes, I think that was when. She was bad off at first, but I took her in and cared for her. She was afraid of everyone but me at first, especially men.” She lowered her head and wrung her hands together in her lap. She didn’t say anything for a full minute.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Jane, I want you to know you can talk to me.” The warmth of her hand on my knee sent shivers through me.

“I know.”

A gust of wind blew. Leaves lifted and swirled, settling again in soft piles of brassy tones. I looked at my wrist as though a watch were there and stood up, suddenly feeling an urgency to leave. Mrs. Dalby had given me a new book and all I wanted to do was go home and read it. As soon as we got home though, we climbed into Gram’s car. She’d been waiting to take us shopping.

“She needs new shoes and a new coat, right?” Gram asked me about Sophie, pulling the car into the parking lot of Sears.

“I guess,” I said, staring out the window.

“What about you? Need anything for school?” She pulled into a parking spot and unbuckled her seatbelt. “You need sweaters. You don’t have enough sweaters,” she said. She grabbed my hand and started walking toward the store. I pulled my hand away and shoved it in my pocket.

“I don’t need to hold hands, Gram, I’m old enough.”

“You’re right, you are. Just stay close; I don’t trust these crazy drivers.” She walked so fast I had to trot to keep up. It had been a week since Missy died. Life without Missy felt lazy, no running, no wrestling. It was bleeding the energy from our lives. Mom was angry or sad all the time; Sophie cried often.

Gram picked out sweaters from the girls’ section and brought them to me. They looked awful, frilly and soft.

“These are all wrong,” I said, holding them up before me one by one.

“Why, what’s wrong with ‘em?” She snatched a sweater back from me and looked at it.

“This one’s pink and I hate pink. This one has a lacy collar. This has puffy sleeves…”

“That’s pretty. What color do you want, then?” She put the sweaters back where she found them. I walked across the aisle and picked up a plain, dark blue sweater. I held it up to my chest and turned toward the mirror.

“Those are boy sweaters,” she said, grabbing it out of my hands.

“I like it,” I said, seizing it back from her. My face grew hot, I wondered if I was wrong to want to dress in a boy’s sweater.

“All right, all right,” she said, stepping away. “You pick ‘em out for yourself then. I’ll get those others for Sophie.” She walked back to the girls’ section. I chose two plain sweaters for myself and pulled one on over my t-shirt to check the fit. When my head popped through the neck hole I jumped, startled by the figure in the mirror behind me.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” he asked, a mixture of repugnance and mockery in his tone, his expression. I opened my mouth then closed it again. I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was short and pushed back behind my ears. My chest flat.

“Can’t figure it out either?” he said, smiling meanly.

“Cut it out, man!” Another boy approached, gave him a shove and they both walked off laughing. I took off the sweater and thrust out my chest. I pulled the hair from behind my ears, letting it fall into my face. With straight hips and nothing up front to speak of, I barely passed for female. I had the face of a girl, soft features and smooth skin, but my body lacked the curves that most girls had and even Sophie was starting to display. This way, people like those boys knew I was a girl when they looked closely enough but made fun of me for being too boyish. I wondered if I would have minded if people had just mistaken me for a boy altogether. I had liked the feeling of that when I was younger. I also realized with dread that I was not attracted to boys like other girls my age were. I had no interest in going with anybody or even flirting.

I had a dream once that I was kissing a girl and she took her shirt off. She thought I was a boy and I was going along with it. In the dream, she took my hand and placed in on her breast, all round and soft. I woke up then, with the feeling of that breast in my hand and the taste of the kiss in my mouth. I was wildly aroused and troubled. I decided that it was normal, that all girls probably have similar dreams every now and then. Standing in front of that mirror being made fun of by that boy, I wasn’t so sure.

“You found what you like?” Gram asked, pushing a cart and adding my garments to the pile.

“No, I don’t want these,” I said, taking them out.

“You’re getting’ em,” she said, putting them back in. She wheeled the cart away from me. “You say you don’t like what I pick, then you pick and say you don’t like that. Well, you’ll live with it,” she said. I followed her silently through the store.



“I wish I had red hair and freckles like Strawberry Shortcake,” Sophie said. I looked up from my book. She had the doll dressed in a new outfit and was combing its hair.

“Why would you want that? You’d sunburn all the time. Besides, you wouldn’t actually have red hair like that. It would be orange,” I said.

“So!” She shot me an annoyed look. I smiled and went back to my book. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing his dive after being outcast by his family.

“Why don’t we go to the beach and feed the seagulls today?” my mom asked, walking into our room, stepping on clothes covering the floor. “You really should clean this room up. It’s a complete mess.”

“OK, yeah! Let’s go feed the birds,” Sophie said, jumping up and getting her shoes on.

“What do you think, Jane?” she asked.

“I’m reading a book about a Seagull named Jonathan.”

She rustled the hair on the top of my head and began picking clothes up off the floor. “We need to do more together as a family,” she said. Ever since my dad had been gone, she tried to do things with us that we didn’t normally do.

At the beach, we took our shoes off and walked along the shore. My mom had brought a baggie of bread crumbs for each of us. Sophie loved it when the seagulls came close. I preferred to keep my distance. Their wild eyes and small, jerking heads frightened me when I saw them up close. I kept my bag of crumbs closed until Sophie ran out of hers, then I gave her mine. My mom did the same, smiling at me as she handed her bag over.

“This is great, Mom!” Sophie shouted, surrounded by a mob of noisy seagulls.

“Are you having fun?” my mom asked me. I nodded and smiled. She grabbed my hand and held it as we walked.

That night I fell asleep while reading on the couch. I dreamt of a man coming into the house and standing over me as I lay on my back with the book open against my chest. I was seeing it from behind him. He was tall and scruffy; his hair lay jumbled and drenched over his face, a tangled wet nest for birds. A thin white t-shirt stretched across his broad back. At first glance, the patterns looked like dark masses of wiry hair. But soon I realized they were veins, madly winding tendrils embedded in sheets of muscle beneath thin, glassy skin.

“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked him.

“Not really,” he said. He leaned down. I tilted my head to expose my neck. He turned into a lion and I felt the teeth go in, the tendons tear, the bone shatter in his clamped jaw.